Bind 21_1:Layout 1 24-06-08 11:18 Side 86 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Novus - Online tidsskrifter (Novus forlag) Minor Papal Penitentiaries of Dacia, their Lives and Careers in Context (1263 – 1408) Eldbjørg Haug From 1263 – 1391, fifteen mendicants are mentioned as minor penitentiaries for the province Dacia in the Apostolic Penitentiary. Nine of them ended their careers as bish- ops in the Baltic and Scandinavia. The hypothesis in this article is that the Scandina- vian papal penitentiaries were intermediates between a geographic periphery of Christendom and the papacy, and contributed to a further centralisation of the univer- sal church. For this purpose it gives a comprehensive biography of the Scandinavian papal penitentiaries in context. On 30 May 1351, the first attempt to centralise the Norwegian church through a papal provision to a bishopric occurred.1 This introduced a period in Norwegian ec- clesiastical history which the founder of the ‘Norwegian Historical School’, the his- torian Rudolf Keyser, as the first described as an overruling of the local church province by the kings of the late medieval unions. The bishop who received a dio- cese in this way, had a significant trait in common with four other bishops in the province, namely a career background in the Apostolic Penitentiary as penitentiarius minor for ‘Dacia’.2 From this moment the kings cooperated with the popes who pro- vided their loyal men to the Norwegian bishoprics. A definite change to the inter- mingling in the church’s internal affairs did not come before 1458, when King Christian I confirmed the concordat of Tunsberg from 1277.3 This confirmation left the Norwegian church in a freer position vis-à-vis the king than the Danish one, which after the reform councils followed the Concordat of Vienna.4 1 A shorter version of this article is published in International Encyclopaedia for the Mid- dle Ages-Online. A Supplement to LexMA-Online. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2007, in Bre- polis Medieval Encyclopaedias http://www.brepolis.net/bme (Eldbjørg Haug 2007c). Its results have been presented at the 26th Nordic History Congress, Reykjavík (Eldbjørg Haug 2007b). I thank Birgitta Fritz, an anonymous referee, and the editorial boards of IEMA and Collegium Medievale for comments to the draft of this article. 2 DS 1829 - VI no. 5273; DN 1848 - VI no. 202. 3 Hamre 1946; Eldbjørg Haug 2003. 4 See Hamre 1955: 489-490; Eldbjørg Haug 1998: 114. Collegium Medievale 2008 Bind 21_1:Layout 1 24-06-08 11:18 Side 87 Minor Papal Penitentiaries of Dacia, their Lives and Careers in Context 87 This study has two aims. The first is connected to the five bishops who as papal penitentiaries received a bishop see in the Norwegian church province. The study will give a comprehensive biography of them. But in establishing the state of the art, sev- eral questions have been stirred up: Since none of these bishops were Norwegians by birth, the first question is why they were provided to episcopal sees in the Nidaros province? Were they hunting for vacant prebends that happened to be bishoprics? And were their careers unique? These issues demand a broader scope than a study of five Norwegian bishops from the second half of the 14th century.5 The study will therefore take as its point of departure the first papal penitentiaries in the early 13th century and follow the Scandinavian ones in a diachronic perspective, while taking due account of the historical context in which they performed their enterprise. Based on existing studies and new interpretations of the evidence, the aim is to give a com- prehensive presentation of the Scandinavian papal penitentiaries until the institute changed or vanished. The first object of this study is thus to give the biographies of the Scandinavian minor papal penitentiaries by taking all the evidence into consid- eration. The other aim is to gain new knowledge about the dynamics between the popes and the papacy on the one hand, and the Scandinavian kingdoms on the other, by fo- cusing on these ‘small prophets’ from the North. The hypothesis is that the Scandi- navian papal penitentiaries were intermediates between a geographic periphery of Christendom and the papacy, which was the focal point of European church politics in the 13th and 14th centuries, and contributed to a further centralisation of the uni- versal church. Let us, however, start by exploring the existing research on the penitentiaries, its focus and results. The Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome was institutionalised during the 12th and 13th century. In recent years there has been a great interest for the insti- tution, connected to a more liberal access to the penitentiary archives of the 15th and 16th centuries. The focus of this article is on the centuries before, when the evidence is sparser. The office of a penitentiary is directly connected to the sacrament of confession. Although sacramental unity was focused on the bishop and preserved through his delegation of pastoral and sacramental celebration, the priests of the 28 tituli churches in Rome early took on a significant share in the sacramental functions of the bishop, the pope. Titular priests could absolve penitents, absolve them, and find them a suitable penitence by the time of Innocent I in 416. In this way there were pen- 5 For the provisions of these bishops see Eldbjørg Haug 2006: 85-89, 100-101,103, 135- 137, 187-188. Collegium Medievale 2008 Bind 21_1:Layout 1 24-06-08 11:18 Side 88 88 Eldbjørg Haug itentiaries in Rome before the more formal organisation in the Curia. As the papal monarchy developed, the papal penitentiary received special power of attorney con- nected to the papal centralisation of the system of penitence, the development of his rights to dispensations, and the pope’s right to reserve cases. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, c. 30 felonies were such reserved cases, most of them having in com- mon assaults on the church and its institutions.6 The Apostolic Penitentiary thus had an important role in the papal monarchy. The summus or maior papal penitentiary was always a cardinal-priest or cardi- nal-bishop, often translated as ‘grand penitentiary’. Towards the end of the 12th cen- tury the first of them is mentioned as ‘the cardinal who then received confessions on behalf of the Pope’ (cardinalis qui confessiones pro papa tunc reciepiebat). A corps of ‘minor penitentiaries’ (penitentiarii minores) appears in the Vatican sources during the papacy of Honorius III (1216 – 27) as the subordinates of the grand penitentiary.7 They were appointed directly by the pope as ‘permanent chap- lains and members of the pope’s household’ (familiares). They thus were in a direct relationship to the pope and held a rank in his retinue only second to the cardinals.8 In the sources they are mostly called penitentiarii or penitentiarii papales; the ap- pellative ‘minor’ is seldom seen. The German historian Emil Göller suggests as a rea- son for their high rank that the popes to a great extent used them as nuncios. We should add that they were well equipped for both tasks, representing the only insti- tutionalisation of a sacrament in the Curia. They enjoyed several privileges, which cannot be traced before the time of the Avignon papacy: the rights to choose a per- sonal confessor, the use of a movable altar, and to distribute plenary indulgence when death threatened (in articulo mortis). Former research The Scandinavian papal penitentiaries on Norwegian episcopal-sees were seen by Keyser and his successors as an aspect of the decline of the medieval Norwegian kingdom. The last Scandinavian papal penitentiaries have gained more attention than their ten predecessorsfor this reason.9 6 Göller 1907: 129; Vincke 1938: 417-418; Gallén 1968; Ingesman 2001: 21-22. 7 Vincke 1938: 417; Majic 1955: 130. 8 Göller 1907: 130; Tamburini 1997: 452; Torstein Jørgensen and Saletnich 1999: 23, 24. 9 Keyser 1856-1858, vol. II: 387-389, 398-403, 431-432; Bang 1912: 273; Hamre 1946; Hamre 1955: 453 – 491; Kolsrud 1958 (†): 277 - 288; Wisløff 1966: 286; Hamre and Eldbjørg Haug (ed.) 2003 (†): 114; Eldbjørg Haug 2006: 84-89, 100-101, 103-104, 135-137, 187-188. Collegium Medievale 2008 Bind 21_1:Layout 1 24-06-08 11:18 Side 89 Minor Papal Penitentiaries of Dacia, their Lives and Careers in Context 89 Keyser saw the hand of the Danish King Valdemar Atterdag (1340 – 1374) be- hind several Danish-born bishops on Norwegian episcopal sees of whom five were former papal penitentiaries. Their provisions were a way for Valdemar to gain in- fluence in Norway. He also saw King Valdemar’s daughter, the Norwegian and Swedish Queen Margaret (1353 – 1412), as instrumental in the promotions of bish- ops after 1370 to achieve a Danish supremacy in the union; the Danish-born Bishop of Bergen, Jakob Jenssen, is exemplary.10 The Danish professor in history and later Head of the Danish National Archives Kr. Erslev accepted Keyser’s idea and pointed to the Danes who achieved bishoprics in the Norwegian church province during Queen Margaret’s reign. His apt formulation that the queen treated the Norwegian province as a ‘stepdaughter’ has been echoed more than once.11 Nevertheless, Er- slev’s judgment seems hasty when material from the Vatican Archives, only made public in 1881, is taken into consideration.12 This material also allowed a reassess- ment of the significance of papal penitentiaries serving as Norwegian bishops. Scandinavians had access to the Vatican evidences even earlier than 1881. The Swedish scholar C. F. Fredenheim succeeded during the papacy of Pius VI (1775 – 1799) to achieve copies of great historical value from the archives.